The severe spring storms and tornadoes' victims included two children -- one as young as three months and the other 14 -- a husband and his wife in Choctaw County, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Jeff Rent told AFP.

The toll was expected to mount as rescuers cleared the debris after the storms tore roofs off buildings, reduced homes to rubble, overturned vehicles, downed power lines and toppled trees that blocked roads.

Rescuers struggled to get to hard-hit Yazoo County, nestled in hills rising sharply out of the Mississippi Delta. In some cases, they resorted to all-terrain vehicles to reach victims.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency in 17 counties devastated by the storms and twisters, and called on the National Guard to help local officials in their emergency response.

American Red Cross workers have also been dispatched to areas affected by the severe weather.

"The effects of these storms have left many Mississippians with destroyed businesses and without homes," Barbour said in a statement.

Downed trees and power lines damaged 30 homes and closed two roads in Warren County alone.

Strong tornadoes meanwhile developed in neighboring states.

Four victims were flown by helicopter from hard-hit Yazoo City to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, while the American Medical Response service transported 17 others by ambulance to area hospitals, said AMR spokesman Jim Pollard.

Emergency response teams set up two shelters to house storm victims in Vicksburg and Yazoo City.

The tornado that blasted through Yazoo City was nearly a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide with winds whizzing at about 150 miles (241 km) per hour, according to meteorologists.

"It reminds me of (Hurricane) Katrina," a teary-eyed Barbour told local reporters of the damage in his native Yazoo City.

AMR operations in other parts of the state were dispatching ambulances to affected areas, while the emergency management agency in Rankin County sent a bus converted to a multi-patient ambulance.

"The patients had a range of injuries from minor to severe. In any tornado, any part of the body is vulnerable or susceptible to a wide variety of injuries," Pollard said, noting that other "walking wounded" patients were treated on site.

Barbour was in Yazoo City, his home town, when the tornado struck.

"He was going through some of the damaged areas and talking to some of the people who suffered the damage," said his spokesman Dan Turner, noting that some building were "completely leveled; they are no longer there."

"We're still looking at the possibility of more damage," he warned. "We're still in the early stages."

The storms cut through a large swath of the country, with areas in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana were placed under tornado watches and warnings as severe thunderstorms swept over the region.

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center "is forecasting the development of a few strong, long-track tornadoes over parts of the mid-south, central Gulf Coast states and Tennessee Valley this afternoon and evening," it said in an outlook statement.

"This is a particularly dangerous situation."

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